RLWRLD raises $41M across two seed rounds to build dexterity foundation models in live industrial environments

RLWRLD closed a $26 million Seed 2 round in February 2026, bringing its total seed funding to approximately $41 million following a $15 million Seed 1 round led by Hashed in April 2025.

RLWRLD is a Seoul-based physical AI company developing robotics foundation models for dexterous manipulation, with operations across South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Its core product, RLDX, is a foundation model designed to give robots human-level five-finger dexterity for manufacturing and logistics tasks, trained on high-fidelity multimodal data collected inside live industrial environments rather than lab settings.

The Seed 2 round was led by Headline Asia and Z Venture Capital, the corporate venture arm of LY Corporation, the merged entity of Yahoo Japan and LINE. Strategic investors in the round include CJ Logistics, Lotte Ventures, Kakao Investment, Hanwha Asset Management, and Smilegate Investment. Hashed, which led the Seed 1 round, also participated. Seed 1 strategic investors include LG Electronics and SK Telecom from Korea and ANA Group, KDDI, Mitsui Chemicals, and Shimadzu from Japan.

The investor structure is central to how RLWRLD collects training data. Each strategic investor gives the company access to a live operational environment; a logistics hub, a distribution centre, a manufacturing line, or a service setting. Collaborative projects with CJ Logistics and Lotte are in progress across logistics, distribution, and service environments, with some having advanced to joint deployment stages following memoranda of understanding. Z Venture Capital is focused on accelerating proof-of-concept projects across Japan through its network in telecommunications, retail, and services.

RLWRLD was founded in 2024 by Jung-hee Ryu, whose previous company Olaworks was acquired by Intel in 2012 in Intel's first-ever Korean acquisition, where it became Intel's Korea computer vision R&D centre. Ryu later founded FuturePlay, a deep tech accelerator he ran for thirteen years before starting RLWRLD. His rationale was to prioritise robotics foundation models over large language models, capitalising on Korea and Japan's manufacturing depth at a moment when comparable AI startups in both countries were scarce relative to the United States, Europe, and China. The founding research team includes six professors from KAIST, SNU, and POSTECH; Jinwoo Shin, KAIST Chair Professor in AI, serves as Chief Scientist.

At the core of RLWRLD's platform is RLDX, a foundation model capable of controlling a 15-degree-of-freedom robotic hand for precise manipulation tasks, trained using high-fidelity 4D multimodal industrial data collected through a proprietary multi-sensor capture system. The company won the Foundation Models category at the 2025 Nebius Robotics and Physical AI Awards and was selected for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator in October 2025.

The Seed 2 funding is intended to support North America expansion, continued model development, and the broadening of RLWRLD's strategic investor coalition. RLWRLD planned to officially launch its robotics foundation model in the first half of 2026. At the time of the round, proof-of-concept and joint deployment projects were underway with investors in South Korea and Japan; no named customer deployments outside the investor network had been disclosed.

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